London stranded A-I plane returns to New Delhi

Over 300 passengers of an Air India flight, stranded in London's Heathrow airport since Thursday following a bird-hit, arrived here this afternoon.

A large number of relatives were present to receive the passengers of the New York-London-New Delhi-Mumbai flight that touched down at the Indira Gandhi Airport here at around 1200 hours.

The Boeing 747-400 with 434 passengers returned to Heathrow within 20 minutes of taking off on Thursday night following the bird-hit. Ninety-six passengers were yesterday flown by a relief aircraft to New Delhi via Ahmedabad while the others returned today after the Boeing's damaged engine was replaced.

Aman Dua, one of the passengers in the flight, said they had faced a "lot of problems" at Heathrow airport.

"There were no officials of Air India to address our queries or problems. Nobody had any information, nobody knew what was happening and where we should go," Dua claimed.

"It was chaos all through the day and we had to spent many hours at Heathrow Airport," he said.